


once you get involved

by silentwalrus



Series: caveat emptor [10]
Category: Fullmetal Alchemist - All Media Types
Genre: Drug Use, Ed getting his ass kicked by an unsuspecting bicyclist, Fake/Pretend Relationship, M/M, Pre-Slash, Roy Mustang: Least Comforting Human On Earth, and a fancy lamppost, roy mustang getting his ass kicked by the fact that other people have feelings
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-09-12
Updated: 2020-09-12
Packaged: 2021-03-07 02:06:50
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,076
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26419198
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/silentwalrus/pseuds/silentwalrus
Summary: “This is about food?” Roy demands.“Yesh!” Ed snarls, and then actually sobs.Roy stares in horror. Edward Elric crying is like turning on the bathroom taps to brush your teeth in the morning and seeing lava come out instead: alarming, deeply wrong and liable to burn your house down. “What was in that IV?”
Relationships: Edward Elric/Roy Mustang
Series: caveat emptor [10]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1790881
Comments: 59
Kudos: 568





	once you get involved

**Author's Note:**

> Once again! I am posting these ficlets out of chronological order! So if it feels like the text is referencing prior events which have not yet been published - you are correct! If you are reading this from the future when everything is posted - yay you!
> 
> title from milkshake by kelis. Thanks jin. Thank u grace wednesday et al as the usual suspects for the funniest concepts in here riffed in chat and Also thank u to aeta for valiantly accepting my request for beta on a friday goddamn night

Of course, life waits for no one, and getting Riza and Maes in the same place at the same time at a sufficient level of privacy to actually talk about this proves to be a singular impossibility for the next week. Ed is radio silent - not that Roy expected otherwise - and in any case the morning after their sparkling little conversation an earthquake collapses half of the ‘demilitarization’ fortifications between the Aryss and Castell rivers on the Aerugan border. _That_ requires Roy’s personal attention, because rebuilding means sending in troops, even if they are just the Engineering Corps, and sending troops into the agonizingly exact demarcation of the demilitarized zone requires a lot of diplomatic bristling and smoothing on both sides, seeing as Aerugo hates Amestris arguably more than any other of their neighbors and vice versa. Roy doesn’t have to make the trip himself this time, but it’s a near thing - he dispatches his Lieutenant General along with Breda and two divisions of the Corps, sans alchemists, and it’s all going to take thrice as long for that, too: if the Aerugans so much as think they see a static electricity spark anywhere near the demilitarized zone they’ll call it transmutation discharge, banned alchemy, grounds for escalation etc etc., and then Roy will _really_ have a problem. He can see why their country decided ages ago that banning alchemy wholesale as an affront against the gods is the only way to keep themselves from going the way of Amestris, but sometimes it can make things so tiring. 

On top of that, Havoc reports that in his purview as genial gossip and drinking buddy of half of enlisted Command he has been reliably informed that Colonel Arlan in Treasury has just caught his LTC embezzling and is very keen to solve it quietly without General Hareis taking time out of her busy schedule to get herself involved. This is not an opportunity to be missed, so Roy returns Havoc to go continue on being a sympathetic friendly ear to the Treasury secretarial staff, describes the situation to Maes via oblique conversation and stops by the Colonel’s office himself to be… helpful. 

He is continuing to be helpful for most of the weekend, so he’s not in the office when the call comes and it takes a little while for the relay of communications staff and security detail and aides to track him down. Lieutenant Khozhaq is no longer on bodyguarding duty these days but he is one of Roy’s most regular dogsbodies, so it’s him who somewhat breathlessly relays that there’s a call for him from Central North General Hospital. 

When Roy gets a call from a hospital things are typically already ass over elbow, but it’s always a military hospital and usually at the tail end of whatever assery and elbowing occurred; it’s tradition that the Minister of War say a few approving words to some particularly valiant soldier, and Roy’s done his share while his comms director hovers over him and radiates threats of graphic injury.

But Central North is a civilian hospital, and Lieutenant Khozhaq looks genuinely worried, even saluting Roy despite the fact that he’s in slacks and a sweater chosen specifically for their aura of genial approachability. “It’s - Mr. Elric, sir.” 

He has Roy’s full attention. 

There’s been some kind of accident, Khozhaq relays. The hospital says Mr. Elric is alive and stable but they’d like him to come down, please. As soon as possible. Please. 

From what Roy can understand - as they sweep into the waiting car, Khozhaq and Ailey and Morozet all chipping in what they know - the accident had been in the street. An ambulance was called. One or more of the paramedics, nurses or other various intake staff had recognized Ed as State Alchemist General Mustang’s midlife crisis and panicked accordingly. This panic was directly transferred to his weekend secretary, who infected his inner office staff, who promptly scattered like a struck hive and went scuttling across the city to finally track him down at Colonel Arlan’s house. As such, he is not in uniform when he arrives at the hospital, but the phalanx of aides around him is enough to clear the way to the front desk. 

All three receptionists obviously recognize him, but only one stands up and heads for one of the inner doors, beckoning. “Bring the car around front,” Roy tells Lieutenant Khozhaq, then to the rest of them, “Dismissed.” They evaporate - one of the few benefits of having the professional reputation of a friendly psychopath - and Roy strides after the receptionist. 

He’s relayed to a nurse’s station, then almost instantly to a doctor - the right one, even, given the man hardly has to adjust his glasses before he says “Mustang? Here for Elric?” 

Roy doesn’t bother to repeat the obvious. “Well?” 

“Don’t worry, your young man will be quite alright,” the doctor starts with, but he must see how much patience Roy has for nonspecific platitudes. “So, Mr. Elric was brought in to us at around seven fifteen -” 

Edward, apparently, got hit by a bicyclist. Since he was about to try crossing the street at the time, the impact sent him into a lamppost. As the street in question was the Promenade by the public entrance to the Victory Hill parks, the lamppost was not a featureless pole but an ornate confection of wrought iron, complete with flourishes, curlicues and pointy metal leaves. Edward is going to have quite the artistic facial bruise, the doctor reports to him, on top of the road rash, cracked tooth, lacerated cheek, broken fingers and bruised ribs and clavicle. The bicyclist, by all accounts, is fine. 

“Wonderful,” Roy says, somewhat less edged now that it’s clear that Ed is largely intact, hasn’t leveled any neighborhoods, and has been treated enough that the doctors are being jolly about it. “Where is he?” 

A nurse gets dispatched to take him to the relevant ward; judging by the two quick looks darted over her shoulder she knows who he is, but he can’t tell if she’s checking whether he’s as handsome as the press photographs or to make sure he’s not about to do anything alchemical and violent behind her. “He’s been given morphine, so he may be asleep,” she says as they approach a door. “He’s right in here.” 

He is not right in there. This is news to the nurse, judging by her sudden blanch, but bodes well for Ed’s mobility and overall state if not for the hospital’s patient management systems. “He went thataway,” reports the old man sitting in one of the room’s two gurneys, but given he’s pointing at the door Roy and the nurse just came in through, it’s not exactly helpful. 

They find Ed ten minutes later, on the other side of the floor in the pediatrics ward, teaching some kid with a broken arm how to take off her cast. “What the _hell_ are you doing,” Roy barks on reflex, remembering too late that he’s supposed to be besotted with this little blond nightmare. 

"It's itchy," Ed and the kid try to explain - or rather the kid does, while Ed just nods, repeats “Itshy,” and then proceeds to drool blood all down the front of his hospital gown. 

Roy retracts everything he had begun to tentatively hope about Ed’s upright and clearly cogitating condition. _“Where_ did you get that,” the nurse says, snatching at the handsaw Ed and the kid are holding opposite ends of; Roy catalogues the rolling IV stand, the line terminating in Ed’s elbow and the fact that he is clearly not too out of it to transmute. He’s also still _dribbling blood,_ but since the nurse is more preoccupied with the handsaw - the kid is objecting to letting go - it’s on Roy to determine whether Ed’s about to topple off his feet and start dying from major blood loss.

“Mleh,” Ed says, like he’s just realized his face is a biohazard goo fountain, and raises his hand like he's gonna try and touch it. 

Roy grabs his hand, then drops it and quickly grabs the other one, on account of it having things like visible skin and separately distinguishable fingers instead of just an inch-thick layer of bandaging. “Honey,” he says, because there are two orderlies and another nurse converging on them in this hall and he’s got damage control to do here. “What are you doing up? We need to get you back to your room.” 

Ed ignores him, tugging at his hand to try to wipe at his mouth. This is terrible for multiple reasons, not least of which is that if he succeeds his current level of coordination almost guarantees that he’s going to smudge, splatter or slap Roy with bloody slime. "Let me hold your hand, sweetheart," Roy grits, in what he hopes is an appropriately caring tone. “You must be. Very upset.” 

“No?” Ed says, sounding puzzled, but it distracts him enough to stop waving his hand and leave it limp in Roy’s grip. It also dumps even more blood out of his mouth, but at this point another nurse taps Roy’s shoulder and hands him a thick handful of tissues, having clearly realized Ed’s about to get active biohazard on the hospital floor. 

Roy knows how much face injuries fucking hurt, so the most he’s able to do is dab as comprehensively as he can at Ed’s chin to try and get all the fluids without actually putting pressure on anything. This does seem to make Ed recognize Roy as an independent outside entity, however, because his face - swollen and taped up as it is - goes through a series of slowed but very definite expressions of surprise, confusion, suspicion and dismay before landing on resignation. “Why’a _you_ here?” 

“The hospital called me,” Roy says, casting about for somewhere to dispose of the bloody tissues; then, feeling it’s not enough, neither for druggy Ed nor their definitely-not-listening bystanders, he adds, “so of course I came, darling.” 

Ed squints at him. “You’re mad a’ me,” he pronounces. Loudly. 

“No,” Roy says, acutely aware of the eyes of every nurse and orderly and patient in this hallway. “I’m just. Concerned.”

“You are,” Ed insists, in the lofty, preoccupied tones of one who is unfairly martyred but knows he must soldier bravely on. “You’re mad a’me alla time.” 

This is just untrue. “I’m really not, Ed.” Roy looks around for their nurse, but she won the handsaw fight with the kid and is now at the other end of the hallway, frogmarching her to what Roy hopes is her parents. “Let’s get you back to your room. We need to see about getting you discharged.” 

“Doctor shaid I can’ go home,” Ed says, but somewhat distractedly given Roy’s decided to take initiative and has put his arm around Ed, hooked Ed’s elbow around his IV stand and started chivvying them down the hall he came from. 

“Let me worry about that,” Roy says, not quite able to fully access the appropriate tone for comforting one’s sweetheart in a medical setting. A _bicyclist,_ for fuck’s sake. 

“They shaid I migh’ have head inshuries.” 

“I’ll bet,” Roy mutters. _Where_ is a trashcan for these tissues. “Why did you even leave your room?”

“Hadda finda toilet.”

Roy briefly experiences true horror. “Did you?” If he hasn’t, surely Roy can find an orderly or something to help Ed should he need to do anything whatsoever in a bathroom; Roy is deeply, probably legally unqualified to help with that. “Please tell me that’s all done.”

“Yesh?” Ed says confusedly, and at that point they’ve reached the room Roy was originally led to. The old man who’d been in here before is gone, either evacuated by forward-thinking staff or fled under his own power, so Roy is free to drop the face of caring and sharing in favor of focusing all his faculties on getting Ed to sit-stay. There is a repeating clicking noise in the room, and despite the general beep and bustle of a major hospital it’s quite close and seems to be moving with them; Roy looks down and sees Ed’s clicking the morphine release button on the IV line. 

The frequency makes it quite clear to Roy that Ed hit the dispensing limit some time ago. “Stop clicking the damn button, Elric, they’ll say you have an addiction - how are you still in pain with this many drugs in you?” 

Ed stares at Roy, then at his hand, then at the IV stand. “Oh,” he says. “I forgo’ that'sh what givesh the drugsh. I jush’ like the clicky noishe.” 

“...Of course you do,” Roy says. “Sit. Have your clicky noise. I’m going to go get you discharged - this will go much faster if you stay put, do you understand? Ed?” 

“Yeah,” Ed says, only somewhat sullenly, though that’s probably because he’s started clicking again. But he doesn’t have the look that means he’s waiting for Roy to stop talking and go away so that he can just do whatever the hell he was going to do anyway, so Roy goes to find out what he has to sign to get them away from all these fucking witnesses.

He finds the nurses’ station from before, which gets him the doctor; the nurse from before joins them momentarily, which speeds things up considerably as Roy realizes that while Ed’s injured enough that they’re giving him morphine and were considering keeping him in overnight to watch for a concussion, this was only until they realised they do not have the desire or resources to deal with an Ed Elric that is high as tits, awake and mobile. Combined with the fact that they want Roy out of this building as soon as possible, this makes for the speediest medical release he’s ever participated in. 

He returns to the patient room to find someone has removed the IV line and helped Ed into his pants - Roy can see gravel embedded in the thick dark canvas, all along the knees and thigh - but that he’s been left shirtless, somewhat hunched over the immobilization strapping around his chest and shoulders. He has a plastic baggie of cotton balls in his lap and a piece of paper in his hand, and judging by the freshly hamstercheeked look he’s at least putting the correct thing in his mouth. “Are those the care instructions?” Roy asks.

“They gimme a bingo shquare,” Ed says vaguely. “While I waited.”

Roy looks at the paper. _Does Your Partner,_ he sees between Ed’s brown and bandaged fingers, and _If You’ve Experienced Two Or More Of These._ The bottom corner sports a staid, discreet little logo: _National Domestic Violence Prevention Program._

“I won,” Ed says happily enough. “All in a row!” 

_I’ve hit you,_ Roy’s own words echo in his head, accompanied, once again, by that flash of Ed’s teenaged face, eyes wide in the second before Roy’s fist connected. Clearly some well-intentioned hero of the hospital staff has designated him the wifebeater in a relationship he’s not even in, and they’re only barely half wrong. 

_So? Everybody's hit me, Mustang. You aren’t special._

Just like before, Ed’s take on that doesn’t actually make anything better. “Wonderful,” Roy says aloud. Maybe a reporter will get a nice clear photograph of Ed waving this helpful little flyer around on their way out of the hospital. How else could this day possibly end. “Keep it. In your pocket. Where is your shirt?” 

“Got cut off me,” Ed says unconcernedly, but by that point Roy has spotted a familiar black jacket lying on one of the chairs. It’s a zip-up but the sleeves are fairly tight, making maneuvering Ed’s arms into it an entire process, not helped by how he won’t let go of the paper; “No, really. Put it in your pocket.” _Dianne_ founded the national domestic violence prevention program and runs it _very_ personally, and she’s the sister with the least compunctions about putting him out to hang with a smile. Roy suspects making the checklist a bingo square was her own idea. “In your - that’s not your pocket, Ed.” 

Ed stops trying to put the paper into the cotton ball baggie, but only because he seems too confused to continue. Roy suspects whoever was so helpful with the pants and pamphlets may have also given Ed more painkiller before detaching the IV, because he’s significantly less coordinated on his feet as Roy tries to get him up and out of the door without actually putting pressure on anything. Roy ends up putting the flyer in Ed’s pocket himself as they approach the nurses’ station, where the bespectacled doctor meets them once again to rattle off a list of do’s and don’ts for the home care of Ed’s injuries. “Keep those ribs strapped, swap the mouth gauze whenever it gets soaked and keep that taping on - he’s got stitches inside his cheek and fixative on the teeth, those’ll both come out on their own, don’t mess with it. Now, diet - broth, juice - liquids only for the next three days. No food, no chewing. Here’s a nutritional supplement to mix into liquid - anything but coffee or tea, milk works best, you can get more at the hospital pharmacy…”

Roy lets this wash over him - care instructions are always written down, and he’s got the whole sheaf of paperwork in his hand - and nods in all the right places until they finally let them go. Ed requires minimal intervention on the way to the car, only weaving slightly and not trying to lose Roy’s grip; “Thank you, dismissed,” Roy tells Lieutenant Khozhaq, who flees the scene immediately and leaves Roy to get Ed into the car himself. While it’s both bizarre and silly to be strapping Ed’s seatbelt in like a bad parody of Elysia’s carseat, it’s at least the fastest and most painless part of wrangling Ed so far; Roy makes sure the seatbelt’s upper strap runs behind Ed’s back so as to avoid the ribs and gets in on the driver’s side, and he thinks everything is going as fine as it can right up until he turns to see big wet tears welling on Ed’s cheeks.

Roy swears, but at least they’re still at the hospital: if Ed’s punctured a lung or something the doctors are right there. “Where does it hurt? Can you move your arm? Show me -”

“I _can’ eat,”_ Ed chokes out, agonized, “for _shree daysh!”_

Roy stares. “What?” 

“Doc’tor _shaid.”_ Ed continues to stream tears, his face heartbroken, his gaze fixed on some desperate inner horror in what Roy is realizing is not a rictus of pain but most likely just a private imagining of some endless yet cruelly inaccessible feast. _“No food._ Shree! _Daysh!”_

“This is about _food?”_ Roy demands.

 _“Yesh!”_ Ed snarls, and then actually _sobs._

Roy stares in horror. Edward Elric _crying_ is like turning on the bathroom taps to brush your teeth in the morning and seeing lava come out instead: alarming, deeply wrong and liable to burn your house down. “What was _in_ that IV?”

“No _bread._ No _chick’n pie._ Not even _shalad,”_ Ed moans piteously. “I wash gonna have. Potatoesh. Fried _and_ mashed. Pepper. Shour cream. _Shallotsh…”_

Roy… does not have a reply to this. He starts the car, pulls out of the lot and gets them onto the road, staring straight ahead while Ed continues to weep like a new widow beside him over the fact that he can’t mainline potatoes. “Please stop crying,” Roy says at the second intersection, on the basis that the tears aren’t stopping and he’ll try anything. “You’ll be able to eat in less than a week.”

Ed does not stop crying. “But I can’ eat _now.”_

“Just - think about something else.” For fuck’s sake. “It’s not that bad.” 

“It’sh worsh’ now,” Ed mumbles, rubbing awkwardly at his eyes with his mummified hand. “I didn’ever cry ash’a kid.” 

Roy has no idea what the fuck to say to that, so he just settles for making a vaguely sympathetic noise and not crashing them into the nearest lamppost. 

“Thish ish all your faul’,” Ed adds damply, still knuckling at his cheek. “Fuckin’... shold me.. _poetry.”_

 _“Poetry?_ What does _that_ have to do with -” Roy cuts himself off, because he’s arguing with a man whose brain is a high-speed ricochet course of nonsense even when he’s _not_ drugged to the eyebrows. “Just - close your eyes. Sit back, try to slee- rest.” If Ed falls asleep in the car Roy will have to haul him out of it, which, again, he’s difficult enough to move even when he’s sober and cooperating. 

“I wan’ potatoesh,” Ed says miserably, which only further drives home the point. 

“I don’t have any potatoes,” Roy says, keenly aware of how fucking inane he sounds. “You can have potatoes later. It’s only three days, it’s not the end of the world.” 

_“No,”_ Ed moans. “Thish ish _worshe.”_

“You have had your _arm and leg ripped off,”_ Roy says amazedly. 

“And I coul’ _eat!”_ Ed returns with surprising savagery, then bursts into fresh tears. 

“Gods above,” Roy mutters under the renewed burbling, shaking out one hand and then the other when he realizes the sharp ache in his tendons is from choking out the steering wheel. He is dearly hoping that this will taper itself off, but Ed just keeps crying, his labored breath turning into half-stifled hiccups and wet gasping. They’re not even halfway home, and it is becoming increasingly clear that Roy is going to have to address this. 

“Fullmetal,” he starts reflexively, then winces and aborts to, “Ed. Are you still - is this still about the potatoes?” 

Ed’s face screws up again. _“Potatoesh,”_ he cries, like it’s the name of a dying loved one. _“Shree daysh!”_

Alright, this is getting them nowhere. “If I get you some food, will you stop fucking crying?” 

Ed makes a desolate noise, but at least his eyes focus on Roy. “Can’ _have_ food.”

“There’s food you can have,” Roy says, squinting to check the street sign and taking the left turn, pointing them back closer to the city center. “You just can’t chew. Just - sit quietly. I’m getting you food.” 

This _does_ quiet Ed, though he does continue to snuffle like an asthmatic pug all the way through Roy pulling up to the cafe on 33rd and thanking every god and commuter schedule that the place opens early and closes late. “Wait here,” Roy orders, reasonably sure the seatbelt will at least slow him down if not hold him, and goes inside.

He comes back out ten minutes later, opening the straw and poking it in as he comes around to the passenger side. Ed stares blearily at the to-go cup in Roy’s hands. “Whasshat.” 

“It’s a milkshake,” Roy says. “Put the straw in your mouth. Drink.” Then, hastily, “but take the cotton out of your mouth first.” 

Ed doesn’t move, just keeps staring at the cup. “Mill shake?” 

“Yes.” 

“It’sh got mil’ in it?” 

“Yes.” 

Ed sniffs, sending a fresh tear rolling down his cheek. “I hate mil’.” 

Roy briefly contemplates upending the cup over Ed’s head, or maybe his own, along with rending his jacket open, ululating like a baboon and tearing off at a sprint into the night. He does not do any of these things. Instead he takes the cup, turns around and walks back into the shop. 

“Hello, me again,” he says, his smile possibly coming out a hair less charming than homicidal this time. “Do you think you could possibly remake this for me? This time with almond milk?” 

Ten minutes later he has a fresh vanilla milkshake, and since the car is intact and sitting where he left it he’s going to assume Ed has either passed out or died in the interval. It turns out to be neither, though Ed gives the new cup the same exact look he gave the last one. “It’s not dairy. It’s almond milk. From almonds,” Roy says, aware he’s starting to sound a little crazed. “Almonds are a nut. Not a farm animal. There is no real milk in this whatsoever.” 

“Drupesh,” Ed says.

“What?” 

“Almons’ ain’ nutsh. They’re drupesh.” 

Roy stares. “What the fuck is… why do you know that?” 

“I read booksh,” Ed says, a familiar stubborn derision returning to his expression, making him look much more himself under the swollen cheeks and crosshatch of gauze and medical tape. “Ashhole.” 

“Just drink the damn drink,” Roy says, relieved, and goes back to the driver’s side. 

There’s some tentative slurping from the passenger seat, then some extremely sustained and enthusiastic slurping. By the time Roy pulls into his drive, nods to the perimeter guards and heads for the garage, Ed has worked the lid off the cup and is trying to knock back the dregs with a noise like an aquarium pump sucking down a frantically struggling goldfish. On a purely auditory level, it is not actually better than the crying. 

On an existential level, however, it is a beautiful miracle, and allows Roy to get Ed into the house, where they face the gauntlet of the foyer. The guest bedrooms are all upstairs, after Riza and Vanessa’s remodel, but Ed’s listing against his side in an unpromising way and Roy is goddamn tired. The couch is probably not a place you should put injured, doped-up ex-child soldiers you’re using as a romantic smokeshow for the free press who turn out to have inexplicable emotional… attachments to you. 

Roy gives up and walks them to his own bedroom. 

Ed does not express an opinion on this all through Roy struggling them through taking off Ed’s boots, though he does reanimate somewhat when Roy takes away his empty cup and cotton balls and starts working the jacket off around the various strapping. “Wha…” he starts, looking around. Then, after a long pause, he says quietly, “Thish your room.” 

“Yes.” Roy feels it’s safest to leave it at that. 

“I don’. I.” Ed seems to struggle with the words for a long moment before going silent again, either losing it or letting it go. “Thish ish shtupid.”’

Roy continues easing the jacket off, careful of Ed’s bandaged hand. “I know.” 

“I mish Al.”

“I know.” 

“I wan’ more almon’ shake.” 

“You drank it all,” Roy says, not without exasperation, but Ed is starting to look dangerously big-eyed again so he hastily amends, “I’ll give you the cafe address.” 

“Okay,” Ed says, letting Roy sort of waft him in the direction of lying back on the pillows. “Drupesh are fruitsh. Technic’ly. Sh’why you can juish ‘em.” 

Roy stares again. “What.” 

“You ashked wha’ drupesh were.” 

“... and now I know,” Roy decides is his answer here, in the interests of Ed doing more sleepy blinking instead of botanical pedantry or belligerent crying. “Thank you. Go to sleep.” 

“Fuck’you,” Ed mumbles, eyes already closing, which is reassuring enough that Roy actually finds himself patting Ed’s metal ankle on his way out the door. 

Of course, he then inevitably has to return to retrieve things like his pajamas and reading glasses and moisturizer. Not that his day is actually done. Riza is still inspecting the garrisons in East and will be for the next two days, but Maes needs an update on the situation with the Treasury Colonel and so does Chris, given it’s her money Roy is going to be using for this little favor. Colonel Arlan himself is all but sewn up, at least: today’s friendly chat was Roy confirming the details of his helpfulness; he has to code out the details for Maes and Chris, decide how he’s going to approach the General. Tell his comms director that they can probably expect some bad boyfriend stories in the coming days, some floating of the words domestic abuse; well, they wanted scandalous, they’ve got it. There’s a set of situational updates on the Aerugan demilitarized zone he has to get through before tomorrow. 

And on top of all that there’s Ed, sprawled out in Roy’s mattress, probably getting gravel in his bedsheets.

They’re going to have to talk, and soon. But not tonight. Standing here staring at how the comforter only barely covers Ed’s middle like a creepy old man is not improving matters. Roy goes to bed. 

When he comes downstairs the next morning, Ed is gone. The medications and hospital paperwork are absent from the nightstand as well; the bed is unmade, the sheets cold. Roy didn’t even hear the doors opening, though with Ed it’s quite possible he simply transmuted himself a short, wide hole in the wall and stepped through. The guards at the house perimeter are all solid professionals, but Roy has no illusions about what kind of difficulty they’d present to an Ed determined to slip out unnoticed. 

It doesn’t sit well with Roy, Ed’s silent exit, and it sits worse that it rankles as much as it does. It’s made worse by the suspicion that had this happened prior to that damn restaurant conversation, Ed would have at least stuck around long enough to eat everything in Roy’s fridge, bitch extensively about Roy’s bedside manner and in general make sure he tripled the inconvenience of his presence before swanning off. 

Ed thought he knew, this whole time. Ed thought he knew, and didn’t care, and that had given Ed - armor, of a sort. To let him not care either. And since Roy _didn’t_ know - since he had _not fucking noticed -_

He’s not angry with Ed. He’s not. It’s _Roy’s_ job to be careful, to watch himself, to make sure that when he hurts people it’s on purpose, to make sure it’s not more than once that Riza has to go through putting a gun to his head. Ed may have spun things out wider and deeper and more dangerous than either of them expected, again, but it doesn’t change that it’s Roy who got him involved in the first place. Again.

And Ed _is_ his friend. He _likes_ Ed. He wants to keep him, even if on his worst days it’s solely because he can’t afford to have Ed in any faction but his own. 

And affection spurned can so easily turn to spite, even in a spirit as resilient as Ed’s. Roy can’t afford to let this fester. 

He _really_ needs to talk to Maes and Riza.

**Author's Note:**

> i got invisalign and it’s shredding my mouth to absolute shit so naturally i gave anime peoples problems my problems


End file.
